Low Temperature Plasma for the Preparation of Crater Walls for Compositional Depth Profiling of Thin Inorganic Multilayers.

ABSTRACT: An indirect, compositional depth profiling of an inorganic multilayer system using a helium low temperature plasma (LTP) containing 0.2% (v/v) SF₆ was evaluated. A model multilayer system consisting of four 10 nm layers of silicon separated by four 50 nm layers of tungsten was plasma-etched for (10, 20, and 30) s at substrate temperatures of (50, 75, and 100) °C to obtain crater walls with exposed silicon layers that were then visualized using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) to determine plasma-etching conditions that produced optimum depth resolutions. At a substrate temperature of 100 °C and an etch time of 10 s, the FWHM of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Si layers were (6.4, 10.9, and 12.5) nm, respectively, while the 1/e decay lengths were (2.5, 3.7, and 3.9

SUBMITTER: Muramoto S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5455798 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature